The French intelligentsia has discovered the content farm model, and it’s not happy. Well-financed, maturing, and in some cases reaching the liquidity climax (Demand Media’s approaching IPO, Associated Content’s acquisition by Yahoo), the content farm model in the U.S. is not without its critics. But as evidenced by Yahoo’s commitment, AOL’s birth of a business […]

There is a subtle but insidious trend burgeoning within France’s private equity industry. This trend is a shift in fund objectives from a “capital gains generation” model towards a “fee generation” model. In other words, the financial benefits accruing to private equity GP’s are increasingly coming more from management fees than from carried interest. As […]

Remember Chirac’s initiative that was met with rancorous laughter to launch a government-backed French Google competitor? That adventure, dubbed Quaero at the time and today known as Exalead, received 19M€ in tax-payer subsidies. I think it was written off by most of the investment community as a classic subsidized zombie company since the venture never […]

I’ve written in the past about the perennity of casual games like Bejeweled and BubbleShooter, and their inevitable shift toward mobile. Then about two weeks, Google featured a Pac-man applet on its home page, which resulted in an estimated $120 million of lost productivity, but gave me a boatload of enjoyment while I was waiting […]

Today’s New York Times Technology section holds an article about the effects of digital overload on the human brain. Bursts of information from bouncing between social media, email, mobile apps, rss feeds, and phone calls undermine a person’s ability to focus (no surprise there). Humans have a primitive impulse to prioritize urgent items over important […]

Despite the unconventional race distances, the Triathlon de Troyes remains one of my favorites. The race organization is high-caliber, and the volunteers are numerous and dedicated. The 30-degree celsius temperature this year proved almost unbearable on the unshaded run course (and I witnessed several casualties). I was pleased to have finished this one fully-conscious.